Services: Design for Manufacturability
New Berlin Plastics focuses a lot of time and effort on design for manufacturability (DFM). Its purpose is to obtain an overview of the design intent, the application of the part, and the environment in which it will live.
Once those points are understood, the next step is to identify any obvious issues with the part design, tool design, and material selection. We also look for opportunities to engineer cost out of your part design, eliminate potential failure modes, and simplify tooling.
Our rigorous DFM analysis leads to reductions in cycle time, improved material selection, and efficient mold design. As part of this process, we can offer design improvements and make recommendations that can reduce cost and improve your end-use experience.
Common part and tool design problems we identify and solve during the DFM process include:
- Complex part designs that can be simplified.
- Design characteristics that will make a part difficult to manufacture.
- Design decisions that drive avoidable tooling costs.
- Geometry that limits our ability to create a robust molding process.
- Potential over-tolerancing that will result in added cost in project launch and throughout the production life cycle.
- Inadequate draft, missing radii, and other things that can impact the surface quality of your part.
For best results, NBP should be brought in before your tooling is built. Making changes after steel has been cut can be very expensive.
The bottom line is that a design for manufacturability analysis helps the NBP engineering team identify part design and tooling problems early, and recommend solutions that will help us deliver high-quality parts at an affordable cost.
